Experiments in Social Media Number 3, Part 1: Rationing Twitter

I don’t know about you but these days, I think in tweets and Facebook status updates.

Today I tweeted 20 times before lunch…

…. Okay, make that more than 20 times.

20’s not that bad – right? I don’t want to be the Twit that floods your feed. And I certainly don’t want to be the Twit that floods your feed with stuff that’s completely irrelevant to you!

But how much is too much? Is the right answer relative? Relative to what you do for a living? Or to what you say? Or to what sort of response you get?

Is it true that the more you tweet, the more valuable you are to followers? There must be a limit to this?

Is it better to be consistent throughout the day/week or to have bursts of activity just when you feel like it? Is it wise to tweet for the sake of tweeting?

Is what you say just noise? How do you make sure it isn’t? Could it mean limiting yourself to just 1 tweet a day? Or 10?

Self discipline and Social Media is not a common combination, but from time to time it is good to take a step back to make sure the time we spend using it, is worthwhile and meaningful. It comes back to the age-old question of quality vs quantity; can I derive as much value from my Twitter usage if I ration it and place the emphasis firmly on quality?

The challenge

We’re rationing our tweets and making them count.

This is an invitation. If you feel like you’re spending too much time on Twitter and need to stop your thinking in 140 characters or less… Or if you would like to take a stand against those that flood your page with meaningless blah-ing… Join me!

Are you up for it??

The method

Discipline doesn’t have to mean going to extremes. Limiting tweets to 1 per day could be a step in the wrong direction. Twitter can and should be used for loads of stuff: listening, trendspotting, broadcasting, sharing, conversing…so it makes sense that we still do that, but with extra thought and attention to making sure it’s worthwhile and meaningful.

And where you feel like you could just keep tweeting away – challenge yourself to find other ways to do this stuff too – take it off Twitter to email, convos, face to face, etc. Push yourself not to be lazy.

So here’s the deal.

1 week, 5 tweets a day:

1 x original content,

1 x RT,

1 x direct message,

1 x reply,

1 x link share

The process

Kick off is tomorrow, September 28! Be there or be square, yo.

The result

This time next week we’ll reconvene here – I’ll post my findings and I’d love for you to share how you went and what you found!

8 Responses to “Experiments in Social Media Number 3, Part 1: Rationing Twitter”

I’ve just stumbled across this with an hour to go before the challenge begins. Sounds hard to do, and considering that 18 months ago I’d never encountered Twitter that’s quite a bizarre concept to comprehend.
But it sounds like a good experiment – moderation and discipline can do a great deal of good from time to time. I’m in!

I’ll be honest – I really wanted to do this and stick at it. And its really difficult as much as I tweet a lot, I think that I couldn’t get by, by minimising contact I have in any other comms channel eg. email or phone calls.

What I will say is looking at it in this way, has drastically cut the number of tweets.

It’s definitely made me stop and think about the quality of what I’ve been tweeting. It’s always good to have fun but being limited to the 5 tweets has made me realise how sometimes, I talk a lot of crap! Like how full I am from lunch, or how inconvenienced I was by TFL today, or how I almost drank nail polish remover.

Shoosh – I missed the start date. I have tweeted 11x today already. (5.15pm now)
Was giving this real thought – I love the challenge. Can my business survive without Twitter though? – Social Media is my sport, and so Twitter is my database, so if I limit my Twitter use, I limit my communication capabilities?

But the point of the exercise already exists – it has made me realise how much I depend on it – not just for business, but as a release – I work for myself, so on my office days have no-one to banter with – and so I use it to break the ice of monotony.